On the road with the Danforth

By Keith Powers, Daily News Correspondent

Sunday

Feb 19, 2017 at 9:00 AM

A small museum with a modest, but influential collection, Danforth Art was forced to leave its downtown home and come up with creative ways to temporarily showcase some of its collection until its new spot on the Framingham Centre Common is ready.

BEVERLY - Framingham’s Danforth Art museum may not have a home, but it certainly has an identity.

A small museum with a modest but influential collection, Danforth and other tenants were forced to leave their home in downtown Framingham last fall after town officials said the town could no longer afford to pay for needed repairs to the building's aging boiler. Museum officials had already purchased and planned for a move, but the unexpected closure pushed up the timeline and forced the museum to scramble.

Currently (for the next few years), the Danforth has space in the Jonathan Maynard Building on Centre Common in Framingham — its eventual permanent location — for classroom activities and storage. But right now, there's no room for exhibitions.

It’s a situation that benefits museums and galleries across the area, as the Danforth sends out its artwork for traveling exhibitions. One of those exhibitions, “Color and Line: Expressive Traditions in Boston,” on view through March 16 in the Heftler Gallery at Endicott College in Beverly, offers a focused look at the strength of the Danforth collection: the works of Boston Expressionists.

Abstract Expressionism, German Expressionism and Boston Expressionism were all “movements” during the 20th century that yoked in some way the trend toward non-figuration, coupled with emotional or psychological directness.

The “school” in Boston - for many reasons it’s pointless to describe multiple artists working in separate ways as a “school” - had mentors first in Jack Levine (1915-2010) and Hyman Bloom (1913-2009), but also in the German artist Karl Zerbe (1903-1972), who taught for several decades mid-century at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Eventually a large number of artists found themselves linked to the Boston Expressionists, and the Danforth has become a permanent home for many of their works. In this exhibition, about three dozen objects, mostly paintings, many in encaustic (a practice Zerbe helped re-establish), reprise beautifully some of the more extensive shows that the Danforth hosted before the museum was forced to relocate.

It’s a deep tradition that Boston artists can be proud of. It may be an overstatement to say that Boston Expressionists helped shake up 20th century collectors and audiences, forcing them into appreciating the modern - but not that much of one.

Works like Lawrence Kupferman (here represented by “South End Façade”), Albert Alcalay (“Open City”), and David Aronson (his bronze sculpture “The Singer”) have found their way not only into the Danforth’s fine holdings but into other museums, galleries and astute private collections as well.

More recent works, like photographs by Steven Duede and installations by Sarah Meyers Brent, further the tradition in unexpected ways, and show that the energy surrounding mid-century art-making in Boston still has fire.

Keith Powers is a Daily News correspondent. Contact him at keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @PowersKeith.